Teaching is a career calling, not a copout

By Ally Bass

That dreaded question again. The last time I heard it drop was two days ago on the tram.

"What do you want to study when you leave school?" asked the elderly man I’d been chatting with.

My response – the same now, at age 17, as it was when I was four – is passionately and absolutely “teaching”.

Ally Bass has wanted to be a teacher since she was aged four.

Almost without exception, the reaction to my answer is overwhelmingly negative. I am warned with great authority (after all, everyone who went to school is an expert) about crap pay, a crazy workload, feral kids, high maintenance parents and third-rate university courses that take in students with ATARs in the 40s.

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“Why do you want to do that,” my classmates exclaim, adding: “Well, at least you won’t have to stress out about getting a good mark next year."

Other people I've spoken to dismiss teaching as “women’s work” or “handy if you want to have children”. And we wonder why we have a gender pay gap.

Our population is growing, and presumably children will need to go to school. Yet teaching is still seen as the “if all else fails” option for some, rather than as a rewarding, stable career choice.

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That’s not to say there aren’t some dud courses out there or dud teachers attracted to the job for the wrong reasons. Show me a profession where that’s not the case but, then again, show me a profession that attracts as much scrutiny as teaching.

This week the NSW government announced new teaching graduates must demonstrate “superior emotional and cognitive intelligence” before being unleashed on a public school classroom. It’s good to see there’s some recognition that teaching requires a complex balance of skills but I have to wonder why the same hurdle is not applied to those studying law or medicine. Or those entering politics.

In the end, fiddling with cut-off scores and introducing fancy psychological testing is just window-dressing to cover up a larger problem – one that speaks more about what we value as a society than anything else.

For me teaching is a calling, not a copout. It only takes a couple of good teachers tolight that spark. And although I am more than familiar with the stories of doom, gloom and burnout – having heard them now for 13 years and counting – I cannot wait to get into my classroom.